


wolf virus

by oonaseckar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Alternate Universe - Wolves, F/M, Gen, M/M, Vegetarians & Vegans, Werewolves, Wolves, vegan Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25286560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: Alt. universe - mundane.  At least, until a virus sweeps the world that turns people into wolves...Dean is gay.  And vegan.  And a college student.But he's still handy with a shotgun.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 8





	1. stay well, stay human

Tonight I walked the perimeter with Cas and Charlie, secured the doors and put up the storm windows. We cooked a curry together in the communal kitchen. I would have preferred pizza, but we didn't have anything in the freezer. And you just can't get anyone to deliver any more. Not after dark.

Then we settled down for bed, in the communal living room of our shared student house, on the pull-out couch, in sleeping bags. Cas was curled up on the recliner chair. He didn't look comfortable, but I didn't ask him if he wanted to share the couch with me, although there was plenty of room.

I had my dad's old hunting rifle: he'd dropped it off for me on campus the week before, with an admonition to keep my eyes peeled and shoot first, check for canines and tail later. My old dad, he never has been able to believe his mischance, spawning a gay vegetarian punk rockin' son. Not that he doesn't love me, in his way. The rifle is proof of that. He _loves_ that thing. And anyway, in these days I'm practically as bloodthirsty as he is.

He'd have stayed, to keep an eye on me, an eye on all of us, if he could. But now Ma is gone, he has my little brothers to think of. So he moved his ass off to the other side of the county, and trusted to us to be able to keep ourselves in one piece, until he saw me next. After all, I am a grown-ass man, now, and should be able to take care of myself, whatever I might come up against.

As far as any nineteen year old kid is ever a grown-ass man, in any case.

Yeah, so I had the rifle. Charlie had the handgun she'd bought for herself off her own bat. And Cas had a baseball bat, which is a very insufficient protection, I think. It's not as if he's some mild-mannered pinko pacifist, not a principled respecter of preternatural species under threat. He's just never come up against a werewolf up real close and personal, at this point. And if he _had_ , I could tell him, he'd take it a hell of a lot more seriously.


	2. Chapter 2

Most people take it much more seriously than that, after the last six years we've all had. Six years, God, six _years_. Has it really been that long? But Cas is local to the area of our college, and it hasn't been designated an affected area more than six months. But I come from further south, and I've been living under the shadow of the virus since day one. I've lost people. Mom was only one of them.

He won't listen, though. We have the TV on quiet, more for background noise than for actual watching, but none of us are close to dozing off yet. (We have electricity. Running water, wifi, gas. It's not a post-apocalyptic scenario, by any means. There's been no apocalypse. Walk around in the daytime, and you'd never know that we're living through a crisis.)

I lie and stare up at the ceiling, dim and grey and high. We have a nice old 50s timber-frame house, none of us could possibly afford it by ourselves. “I'm going to buy you a taser tomorrow, Cas baby,” I tell him. “You let a wolf catch you with nothing but that bat to defend yourself, you're dead meat. I'm going to teach you how to shoot, and you're going to start packing _heat_.”

He looks across at me and smiles, that way that curls up my guts like they're independently trying to kill me. “Like a good ol' boy, huh, Dean? You gon' teach me to tickle catfish and swim in the crick?” His smile is sweet, curls his mouth into a parenthesis, one of those fancy ones with the curlicues either end. He's not making fun. Or only in the most affectionate way. He may be a damn idiot about wolves, but he knows I'm not a Southern belle.

Lucky for him. If I was Scarlett O'Hara, sometimes he makes me crazy enough I'd use my shotgun on _him_.


	3. Chapter 3

He liked me, Cas did. If only I could have contented myself with that. “Your Southern accent is the _worst_ ,” I told him peaceably. “Just the worst. I haven't the words to describe just how bad."

And he just scrabbled about on the recliner, and yawned and sighed, and pulled at his t-shirt in a way that outlined everything about his torso that was beautiful, for a moment. Then pulled the throw over himself, and settled himself more comfortably. “Ah, you love me,” he said, in a voice that argued and justified himself. And taunted me a little bit, all at the same time.

I didn't argue. I just said, “Good night, man. Go to sleep.” He mumbled at me, and Charlie laughed softly at me in the dark.

“Boys,” she muttered obscurely, and that was all the night's farewell I was going to get out of her, I knew pretty well.

Yeah, yeah, I did. Did love him. That was most of the trouble. Barring the wolves, of course.

xxx

The virus – _virii lupinium,_ or wolf-bug if you have no use for fancy Latin, or CDE – _canine dentition epidemic,_ if you read the news or belong to a government agency – came to the awareness of most folks around six years ago, like I say.

It's not really a serious illness. Or, I should clarify what I mean. I'm a journalism student: I should know how important it is to make yourself clearly understood. It's an illness with very serious consequences. But as far as the infectious and suffering period are concerned, it doesn't last all that long, or not comparatively. It's like the bone-aches of a really, really bad influenza – which, come to think of it, is pretty serious in itself. But that only lasts for the first hour, which of course sounds like nothing at all. Don't underestimate the severity because of that. The mortality rate isn't high, but one or two per cent of sufferers – that's the mortality rate, for that first hour. If you can get yourself to an emergency room, though, you'll almost certainly be fine. The trick is to get yourself there, in that space of time, when you're that sick, if you have no-one to take you.


	4. Chapter 4

Of course, you could always call 911. But if you call 911, and tell them the truth, then they'll be at your door in short order, right enough. But it's the cops you might get, instead of or as well as a brace or two of EMTs. Or an army helicopter landing in your backyard, or a SWAT team. The second stage, that's the trouble –- that's what might get you more than you bargained for, once the infection's officially reported.

Oh, the clue's right there, it's in the name, you've worked it out already. The second stage of the virus is _lupine_.

God, I only wish I was exaggerating, that I meant that sufferers get kind of a hirsute look and howl a little, that they have to make with the depilatory cream once they've recovered themselves. The transformation is complete, to quadruped, to fully pelted wolf, to a wild creature there's no holding and no controlling.

The bug does something to the DNA. There's a temporary holding form, the very machinery of every cell mutating and twisted, base-pairs sliding out of the helix and re-inserting themselves, whole chromosomes forming themselves out of whole cloth.

And our scientists can't currently understand how this process works, and yet the sufferers _live_. It should kill every one stone dead, apparently. But no, a brief bad fever is all it amounts to. And then a sufferer can look forward to two weeks, approximately, as a wild beast. Evading capture, hunting raw meat in the wild, seeking a mate.

Less said the better about that last. In any case, as long as you survive the lupine stage, any permanent damage is minimal. (As long as you don't spend it out in the wild, and if you do, then as long as you manage to avoid serious injury, fighting and tussling and hunting as you'll be during that time. And getting trawled and caught by the authorities. That might be worse.)


	5. let him have the body

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is what I used to think a rough translation of _habeas corpus._

Third phase, that's about two days of a much lighter fever and some pretty nasty joint and muscle pain, the end result of the unnatural changes they've been undergoing. Most people recover fine – physically, at least. This is the return to human form, and it begins at the onset of the second fever.

Then it's over. Physically, as I say. It's the psychological recovery that's the hardest, and that's as long as the sufferer isn't facing any criminal charges. Because while you're the wolf, pretty much anything can happen. And it often does.

xxx

It starts with a cough, that's what they say. That's what my mom said, back when she was an emergency room nurse, and she was seeing the first cases that were being brought in. The lucky ones: the ones that were dealt with quick enough, or just by happenstance were near enough by to make it. They got sufferers into isolation, sedated, treated the fever, and watched the transformation. The early clips are pretty funny. You get to see the responses of the nurses and the doctors, and the researchers they parachuted in quick sharp after the first two or three medical professionals got bit and went through the whole thing themselves. The sedation applied is equivalent to a sledgehammer to the head, enough to knock out even a turned wolf to the point where danger is minimal. But still, when the first bone cracks and the sproutings of hair pop up, you've never seen anything move so fast as those _lupine emergency unit_ operatives, and how they get themselves the hell out.

It starts with a cough. And if you're not already in an emergency room, then you'd better get yourself to one. But people know better than to call the emergency services, now. Or at least, they shouldn't. But they do. No-one calls. The governmental body public service broadcasts, the flyers, the posters up in every store window, the plastering of them in every doctor's office, these things should perhaps alert the general populace to the importance of the matter, the fact that it's a public duty and a high priority.

No-one calls, when they get the cough. They try to get to the nearest hospital _themselves_. It's enough of a problem that suspected cases get trawled for over open land in helicopters, just on the off-chance. If you don't surrender yourself to treatment – and maybe if you do – then your destination is an army unit, where the priority is containment, not treatment.

But if you get yourself to the hospital, at least your nearest and dearest know _where_ you were admitted. They can pursue your treatment, hassle unit staff. Call a lawyer and start talking _habeas corpus,_ if you suddenly, mysteriously can't be traced.


	6. dance when the moon sings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is Patricia Briggs. Oh Briggsy!

Of course there is talk of experimentation, of weapons development, of cybernetics, for those who surrender themselves and are shoved into camo army rigs. It's _probably_ not true. But there have been certain media stories that have people spooked.

And it all starts, all of this, with something as simple as a cough.

xxx

I woke in the dark, in the early hours of the morning. It was the cough that woke me. I was coughing.

It's funny how sensitized everyone, absolutely everyone is, to that particular sound, at this point. Because Charlie and Cas, they woke after me, but only a very faint split-second after. It was too dark to see more than the gleam of each other's eyes in the dark. But we lay there, each one of us propped up on our elbows, none of us saying a thing. Just breathing there in the dim dark, and then I coughed again. And then again.

I knew what they were thinking, of course. But they wouldn't damn well say it, and so I had to myself. “There we go, then,” I said, feeling hopeless. “Drive me to the emergency room, would you, one of you? Or you could just knock me on the head, or shoot me.”

An awkward little pause wasn't a big surprise, when it followed. But Charlie spoke first. “Oh, shut up, Dean. Fucking drama queen, aren't you? Let's think it over. a), it's _only a cough._ You do know there are multiple types of cough, and it's probably nothing? And b), even if you have the virus, it's a two week bug, for Christ's sake. Even if you spend most of it as a furry moon-obsessed lunatic, it'll still all be over in fourteen days, and when it's done...”

I could tell that she wanted to say, “Then you'll be fine.” But that would have been stretching it. It's a traumatic experience, even for people who undergo it in captivity, receiving professional care. With no injury, no harm to anyone they care for (or don't), no bites administered to other people. But there are worse cases than that, and everyone's heard about them by now.


	7. Chapter 7

“Either way,” I said -- and I was trying to be calm, trying not to freak out and froth at the mouth, just at the possibility of what I was suspecting. “Get your asses up and dressed. You're taking me to the emergency room.” I was up myself, grabbing and searching about for my hoodie, my boots. And I was hacking, loudly. The cough, it had barely begun: but it wasn't showing any sign of going away.

Charlie settled back in her sleeping bag, letting her head rest on her plump arms with her dyed hair pillowed out over the quilted cover. “Jesus, Dean,” she complained. “It might be nothing. It's _probably_ nothing. At least wait the ten minutes and see, we'll be dressed and in the car and down the road and all for nothing, if you've just got a frog in your throat or laryngitis. I need my beauty sleep, dude.”

But Cas, my man, he was already up beside me, dragging a sweater on over his tee and jingling about on the side-table looking for the truck keys. And since I was leaning against the living-room wall -- trying not to bring up a lung -- he spoke for me, hurried and impatient. “Fine, Charlie. You want to stick around, be the only one in the house, you do that. Make sure you get all the safety barriers up again when we're gone, because we haven't got that kind of time. You know what kind of difference ten minutes can make with this disease?”

No-one wants to be left alone in a house at night any more. Doesn't matter how good your defenses, your barriers are. Regular wolves are one thing, and aren't liable to come sniffing around human habitations. But virus wolves, they are _something else,_ altogether. And in any case, Charlie isn't dumb, and she isn't an asshole either. She was always going to come with. She was just registering her protest about it, is all.


	8. the Wild still lingered in him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is White Fang, Jack London.

She snapped the lamp on, grabbed jacket and shoes, and we blew the joint. Fast as we could make it, and there was no guarantee even that would be fast enough. But that was the way we had to roll, force majeure of circumstance right? Cas was running to the driver's side and Charlie was in there –- she had some turn of speed considering she'd got some heft to her too. I didn't even bother with the cab up front. It was a flat-back, and I threw myself over the side onto it, didn't care much how banged up I got because Cas was revving up the motor and we were moving. We were moving, the only question was if it was fast enough, and no-one, no-one wants to be locked up tight in a confined space with someone who could be a wolf in seventy, sixty-five minutes.

Of course, I could still be fine. You never knew. I banged on the back window as we were heading out onto the highway, and I grinned manically in as Charlie peered back, and Cas reached up from the gearstick to give me the finger. I was sick, I could be a wolf almost before you know it, and the potential consequences were pretty fucking dire. But on the other hand, why worry? If I was doomed then I was doomed.

Charlie and Cas had been damn good to take me to the hospital, really. The thing about the wolf phase, was that sufferers seemed to retain some human sentience. At least observers thought so. They thought so because once you were turned and you were furry, then it seemed like the place you wanted to hang out, was around your loved ones, the people and the places that you were closest to.

Of course, it was possible that Cas and Charlie did't realise that –- as friends of a bare six months –- they were the people I was closest to. Who else was there going to be, my family? That was a laugh. It was also a little pathetic.

It was also the thing that put them in the most danger. When you're wolfed out, you hang around human habitations much more than a regular wolf, old _canis canis._ You keep a close eye –- unless you're caught, or worst case killed –- upon the ones you kept company with, human. And it doesn't appear to be for benevolent reasons. Because, given time and opportunity, quite often, a turned wolf bites its loved ones.

Remember, sometimes the first stage of the virus kills. Sometimes the bite kills, too. And if it doesn't kill, it passes on the virus to another carrier, another sufferer.


	9. it's the perp, dummy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is probably Lizzy Wurtzel.

I was sweating, and panicking, and a lot less cool and sanguine than I was pretending. What else was I going to pretend, though? Was I going to scream and beg and rail against a heartless destiny, beg a God I wasn't sure I believed in for mercy? Was I going to curse the stupid scientists who still hadn't come up with a vaccine, still less a cure for this curse that was turning reasonable human beings, day by day, into drooling creatures of myth and horror?

No, as it happened, I probably wasn't. Because I was already fucking uncomfortable, bouncing around in the back of my dad's old pick-up truck. But with the first twinge, as I was still hacking away with a cough that wasn't going to bring up a hawking great gob of green sputum, that was all about inflammation and soft tissue changes and the complete transformation of every cell of my body... I knew I had real pain ahead of me, so that I couldn't even spare a moment to worry about my buddies, because, well...

Because there was a clenching wrench that was like a fist in the gut, except it was everywhere, everywhere, and in every bone and joint and tendon. And I guess I started screaming then, and I only devoutly wish I could say I passed out with the pain. But I didn't, and if it wasn't pitch dark and the highway wasn't halfway deserted like it was these days –- no-one out after dark if they could help it, no sir –- then maybe I might have been worrying more about maybe getting noticed, getting spotted, getting stopped. But I was flat down and howling –- with pain, not a wolf howl, not yet –- in the bed of the truck, and even a cop car would probably have passed us by and just radioed in a report to pass on to the army wolf unit. Because who could say how close I was, if it was just an observer? I could be this close to turning, and there was no officer who wanted to risk that, wanted to come home bitten up and risk passing on the virus to his family. No way, baby.


	10. Chapter 10

Tranq guns didn't work on wolves, or not on virus wolves. There wasn't much that did work on them, it seemed like at this point, though apparently the army had learned a trick or two.

Charlie and Cas caught on after a moment or two, what with the howling and the screeching and the thrashing around. And Cas just glanced at the mirror, I could see it as I arced my back with a spasm that seemed like it was doing its best to pull me into two separate halves. I saw it and I _didn't care._ And to say that I didn't care, about anything that Cas was or did, completely illustrated the level of the pain I was in.

The day I didn't care about Cas was the day I was half-dead to begin with.

Charlie, though, running shotgun, she got the sliding window open and she yelled at me, against the rush of the wind and the pain, though I could hardly hear her for the roaring in my ears, the red tunnel of suffering I was being dragged through. “Christ, this is it, isn't it? You've got the virus. Shit, Dean, you gotta _hold on._ We're making good time, hold on, hold on, it'll be okay–-“”

But I was maddened, and against the raw red rush of the agony, somehow I managed to roll over and crawl towards her and shriek, louder than before. We jolted over a bump and I didn't care. I didn't care if I got flung out of that goddamn truck, I didn't care if--.


End file.
